It seems like all the things I want are the primary causes of stress in my life.

If I just didn’t try for these things, I’d have a much simpler and less stressful life. It’s definitely taking me from what I would rather be doing, but I think the “things” I’d rather be doing in Berlin are a local maximum for what I could be doing with my time, vs. what I’m hoping will be a higher level of happiness.

Note: For this post, I’m experimenting with embedding bandcamp links. So here you go, have a listen. If you like music, you should buy it from bandcamp.

Stay loose, stay wild, stay free.

Dual Citizenship

I’m currently attempting to get dual citizenship (I’m American, and going for German citizenship). If I were to just follow the desires of Germany and relinquish my American citizenship in favor of German citizenship, this would be super easy. Because I want to have both, I need to also prove that it’s in Germany’s interest to have me as a citizen, but that it’s also greatly in my interest to remain American (for work or whatever other reasons).

In addition to that, I have to take a language test (B2, looks like it’ll be easy), and the citizenship test (33 questions multiple choice, 17/33 is a pass). No part of this seems difficult, but having these as tests of my abilities with the possibility of failure definitely create a level of stress that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Now, for this level of stress (short term, honestly quite minimal), the positive outcome would be worth so much. To be a citizen of the EU and America would guarantee me the ability to live across a massive area of the world, and if I were to have children (if), they would also be guaranteed these citizenships, in additional to any others they may get based on my partner/location at that time. If I get dual citizenship I can definitely see myself either picking up stakes and heading elsewhere in the EU, or at least seriously considering investing in a second place while maintaining my fairly cheap and well situated apartment in Berlin.

Speculative Part-time Work

I’m working full time at elastic.co but also 6 hours a week or so for a local brewery. It’s really not many hours at the end of the week, but it’s definitely an effort on a Saturday or Sunday to say “Ok, now I have to work for a few hours” when I really don’t feel like it. I’m not being paid, but I suppose I’m viewing it as any other investment. Most likely nothing will come of it, but if for some reason it transitions into something larger, having that early-stage foot in the door would be awesome.

Summary

Clearly it makes sense to do these things now. That doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to them being done, though. Here’s to me writing in a few months about how I have my german citizenship..